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- [00:01]
A
Expedia and visit Scotland. Invite you to come experience the beauty that awaits in Scotland. The sweep of wild coastlines, quiet lochs and untamed landscapes, fresh cuisine that feels rooted in the land. Come experience the kind of stillness that stays with you long after you leave. Plan your Scottish escape today@expedia.com VisitScotland Foreign.
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B
Welcome to all your bookcasers. Welcome to all you bookies. It's good to have you with us again for another version of the Bookcase with Kate and Charlie.
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C
Hello, book nerds. I'm Kate. How are you? I'm the one that keeps him honest.
- [00:51]
B
We have with us this week one of the most important voices, I think, in writing in America today. Jasmine Ward has a new book out of essays that she has written over the last 10 years or so on Witness and Respair is the name of the book. And I have a sense of what you may be thinking. Oh, a book of essays. Give me a mystery, for goodness sakes. But bear me out, because when this book came to us, we had the same reaction, that few people will want to read it, but they should. They should, right, Kate?
- [01:26]
C
I think they should. And I think also, too, we've made the case before and we'll make it again here, please try. Essay books. I mean, they really are. They're an amazing way to sit down with a writer and pick their brain without picking their brain.
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B
Right.
- [01:40]
C
It's a great way to get sort of washed in their language and. And in their thoughts on deep and meaningful matters. And I loved this book. I think it's beautifully written. It's remarkably written. It's a group of a lot of her different works, and she sort of covers everything. Like, there's an amazing literary essay on Gatsby. There is her thoughts on raising a black son. Like, there's a little bit of everything in this book, and all of it is worth a read.
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A
Yeah.
- [02:08]
B
I thought when we got this book that we should probably take a pass, but when Jason Reynolds, who was with us a couple of weeks ago, said to us, you have to read this book, I'm so glad we did. Jesmyn Ward writes great fiction. She's the only woman to win the National Book Award twice. Twice. Yes, she's won it.
- [02:25]
C
Yes.
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B
And as this book, and she's not
- [02:27]
C
in her 80s, she hasn't quite. She hasn't quite turned 50 yet. So that's quite an accomplishment.
- [02:33]
B
And as this book makes manifest, she writes searing nonfiction, but she writes of the overall black experience. But I think, Kate, she Writes best when she writes about her own experiences.
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A
Hmm.
- [02:45]
C
Let Us Descend. A great book, but she's a really brilliant writer. And the Men We Reaped was her creative nonfiction before this. Again, I think this is an amazing book. It covers a wide range of topics. There are a lot of essays about race, about the search for equality. And we really try not to do political books on this podcast because half of the country is yelling at the other half of the country. It doesn't really matter which side you stand on. We're all yelling at each other. And I'm sorry that in that vitriol that race has somehow become a quote, unquote political issue, because I genuinely believe that you can't live in this country and not believe in opportunity in the fight for equality. It's built right into the Constitution. It's built right into the Declaration of Independence in varying ways, because our country has a very sordid history with race. But I don't believe race. I don't believe you can believe in the American experiment and not believe in the fight for equality, no matter which side you're on. So while we acknowledge there are a lot of passages on race in this book that we think are very important, we do not acknowledge that that is a political issue.
- [03:54]
B
Yeah, opportunity for all. Equality for all, as you say. It's in our founding documents. All men are created equal, so we don't consider that political anyway. And she makes. She writes about it so well. You might find it remarkable that after being educated at Stanford and the University of Michigan and writing three books while she was living in New York, that she would move back to Mississippi, the state of her birth, that she wanted to raise her children in Mississippi. She finds great hope there and great joy, and she'll explain why. But Spoke is not overall a downer. There's parts I could see you might think a downer. But she also finds being in Mississippi necessary for her soul, which I thought was really, really interesting.
- [04:38]
C
And again, it's a book lover's treat. There's a great essay in here about Faulkner. There's a great essay in here about James Baldwin. There's a great essay in here about Jay Gatsby. If you're a book lover, you'll love this book.
- [04:51]
B
Yeah, she made me look at Gatsby in a whole new light. You'll hear three times she contemplated giving up writing when her brother was killed by a drunk driver who went largely unpunished. Once when Hurricane Katrina so ruined her part of the world, and a third time when her husband suddenly developed a respiratory disease, died within a couple of days at the age of 33. Her grief was so great that she contemplated giving up writing. But luckily for everyone who's a reader, she didn't. She went back to writing. So let's start our conversation with Jesmyn Ward.
- [05:30]
C
Jasmine Ward, it is an honor to have you in the bookcase. I. I want to start with the two words in your title, both witness, and let's start with witness. What in your mind is important about witnessing? And what do you mean in this context about witness?
- [05:46]
A
I think that witness is essential to what I do and the kinds of stories that I tell. For me, witnessing means to really sit with reality, to sit with the truth of the experiences of the people that I write about and to not record them, but to note them in all their complexity. Right. And to be honest about it. Right. And for me, witnesses, perceiving the entire reality, perceiving the entire story. Right. And then committing to translate that into words, to translate that into. Into story, onto the page.
- [06:30]
B
Do I quote you correctly? Is there some phrase in the book that to witness is to love?
- [06:35]
A
Yes. How so? Well, I. I didn't understand that or didn't come to that idea, I think, until two things happened. One, I was wrestling with. With my grandmother's. With her condition, with her Alzheimer's, Right. And was trying to figure out how. How to. How to deal with it. Right. And I think the other situation where I sort of realized that to witness is to love was definitely when my spouse. When my spouse died and I witnessed his going. His passing. Living through both of those experiences sort of clarified that idea for me because I understood that in sitting in that moment, even though with my grandmother, it was moments, right. But being present, being there, even through, you know, the pain of it, that it was an expression of love. Right. Because you were present, because you were sort of sharing the burden of that moment with the person that you loved.
- [07:54]
C
We interrupted Jessmyn to ask her to read a passage we felt best exemplified her bearing witness, in this case to racial stereotypes she feels persists in white American minds to this day.
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A
That was the underlying whisper I heard in the stories my grandmother told me. They think we are less than human. That was the unspoken phrase in my father's story. They think we are worth less. That was the silent affirmation in my mother's tale. They think we are less, always less. This is what my own experience, my own reading confirmed for me. This is what my classmates awful racism taught me. This is what I internalize this voice that says, you are are worth less. This was the voice I struggled to shrug off every day as a child, as an adolescent, and now as an adult. This is what a culture that devalued Black Life for 400 Odd Years tells Black people today in 2019 about the value of black life.
- [09:00]
C
I wonder, did you think respair was an important companion with witness and why you think respair is sort of important at this moment in your life and in our history?
- [09:09]
B
Before you get to that, I'm not sure that Katie and I weren't familiar with the word, and I'm not sure many of our listeners are. So Katie's question should stand, but I think you should define in effect, what respair is.
- [09:23]
A
Yes. So respair means to find hope after despair. And I was not familiar with the word until 2020, after my spouse died, somewhere in the middle of the year when Ta Nehitse Coates approached me and asked me to contribute to the Vanity Fair issue that he was editing. And it was such a remarkable concept and a remarkable word. And I thought, I have to hold on to this, to this word. And as I was sort of working on the title, the essay on Witness and that word kept coming back to me. And even. Even though at the time I definitely had not found my way to spare. But I think that I wanted to include that word in the title in the hope that I would one day find hope.
- [10:18]
B
But she acknowledges if she just wrote about bearing witness to what she sees societally and her own experiences, what they've been like, it might be too depressing. So she does write about why she wants to live in Mississippi and the joys that she takes from that. So we asked her for an example
- [10:35]
A
of I Breathe, I Remain. I remember that Mississippi is not only its ugliness, its treachery, its willful ignorance. It is also my nephew hurling his body down a water slide, rocketing to the bottom, joy running from shoulder to heel. It is my godmother boiling pots and pots of shrimp and pouring them into a children's pool so we can eat the delicious spicy mess at our family gathering on the Fourth of July. It is my youngest sister smiling and dancing to Al Green in my godmother's driveway while the night unfolds like a hand and the insects hiss with summer's sibilant kiss. It is riding to a convenience store with my childhood friends with the windows down and the night wind caressing me on my cheekbones, UGK booming from the speakers in answer to the blooming Mississippi night it is. Sitting on the porch with my 78 year old grandmother, my children sandwiched between us on the swing, making idle talk and watching hummingbirds zip through the air beyond her screen as she tells us stories flush with joy.
- [11:51]
B
Jasmine, you have written fiction that is honored. And here in this book, your essays are often remarkably personal. What best expresses what you want to say, fiction or non?
- [12:05]
A
I think it depends on whatever I'm trying to express. For example, so back. Gosh, when was that? 2000? Around 2010, I think, or 2009, maybe. Whenever I was sort of mulling over the idea of writing about my brother and my brother's death and my friend's deaths, right. Which I ended up writing about our experiences in my memoir, Men We Reaped. Before I began working on the memoir, I thought, well, maybe this should be a novel. And I, you know, wrestled with it and wrestled with it and finally reached a point where I. Where for me, I came to the conclusion that it couldn't work as a novel because it would be really hard for the reader to suspend their disbelief, right? Because they wouldn't believe that this, you know, this, the sequence of events could actually sort of happen. Right. And so I thought, well, it's going to have to be a memoir, right? Because it's. Because it, you know, it did happen. Right. And the only way that I can sort of firmly sort of state, you know, that we endured these losses is by just writing it as a memoir. Even though I was totally frightened of writing that memoir because I didn't have. I wasn't trained in it, right. I mean, I spent years working on my fiction in the classroom and outside of the classroom, but had only taken a couple of classes on creative nonfiction. So I didn't really know what I was doing. But I thought this is my story and it's an important story and it has to be told in this form. So I'm just going to do the best that I can, right, to tell it versus, you know, Salvage the Bones was about, you know, this family encountering and living through Hurricane Katrina. I also lived through Hurricane Katrina, but I don't know, there's something about that story that I don't know, that I sort of understood. This story belongs to fiction, right? Like this should be fictionalized. You know, this isn't. This story doesn't have to be so closely aligned with who I am and with my experience. I think it's more of an intuitive choice sometimes, you know, where I sort of make this decision between whether or not. I'm going to this story will, you know, be rooted in fact or whether this story, you know, I can write it, you know, as a novel or a short story or something like that.
- [14:51]
B
So we'll interrupt for a moment and be right back with more Jesmyn Ward. Study and play come together on a Windows 11 PC. And for a limited time, college students get the best of both worlds. Get the unreal college deal, everything you need to study and play with select Windows 11 PCs. Eligible students get a year of Microsoft 365 Premium and a year of Xbox game Pass ultimate with a custom color Xbox wireless controller. Learn more@windows.com studentoffer While supplies last ends June 30, terms at aka mscollegepc Tomorrow morning is knocking.
- [15:32]
A
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- [16:07]
C
I'm interested into what your process in some of these articles, these speeches, these introductions you write about, some very painful personal. You did that in the Men We Reaped as well. What is your process when you say, today I'm gonna write about something that is so deeply painful I'm gonna have trouble showering the day off. How do you prepare yourself? And are there days where you sit down where you prepare yourself? You're like, nope, can't do it today.
- [16:29]
A
Yeah. I mean, yes, it's all those things. I, I so I do several things. I, you know, when I was working on Men We Reaped on my memoir, I was having trouble just like sitting with it, you know, sitting with my brother's life, sitting with my brother's death, sitting with my friend's life. And I was really resisting the process, right? And then I came across, you know, years and years ago, came across an essay by Kiese Lehman, right? My fellow, my cousin, my, my fellow Mississippian, you know, amazing writer, right? But he, at the time he had published, he had, was, I think he was working on an essay collection or it might have been out in the world at that point, but he published one of his essays in Gawker and I so I stumbled, I Used to read Gawker all the time. And I read it. That essay, I can't remember. I think it was. I think it was the title essay. I think it was how to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America. And I read that essay, and it was so honest and so beautiful and so blunt and so well constructed and so powerful and moving and devastating. And I thought, I gotta get it together, right? Like, he's doing all the things on the page that I should be doing. And so it was sort of an admonition to me, I guess, but it was an admonishment. But it was also inspiration, right? It was inspirational. Because I think I need to be reminded every now and again, right, that we can witness and reckon with and sort of find inspiration in the more painful and darker moments. And there's worth in that, right? Because doing that kind of work and making yourself vulnerable in that way and, you know, sharing that on the page, you know, part of what that is doing is that is that work finds readers in the world. And, you know, these readers are also struggling with the same thing, right? They're struggling with grief, they're struggling with loss, they're struggling with trauma. And so in, you know, making yourself vulnerable on the. On the page, you are helping others to navigate the same thing, and you're helping others to feel less alone, you know, in the struggling. And so I hold on to that too, right? Like, I remind myself of that too. That, this. That, you know, the difficulty, it allows me to push through those difficult moments because I believe in the worth and of the work and, like, what. And what it will. What it. How it will help people.
- [19:10]
B
You used the term a moment ago, creative nonfiction, which I first, I think encountered that term with Capote's In Cold Blood. Norman Mailer, I think, did a lot of that in his writings. How do you define creative nonfiction? It seems like a hybrid in a way.
- [19:33]
A
It is. I mean, my understanding of it is that creative nonfiction is when you are using all the craft tools of fiction. So, you know, you're constructing a narrative, you are creating and developing characters. Know there's. There's a plot, there's a sequence of events. You know, you're trying to write a. A sort of a riveting beginning. You're trying to create some sense of momentum, right? So you're using all the. The craft tools of fiction, but the events that you're writing about are based in fact. And so as long as you sort of honor that and. And write truthfully towards that, like using the facts, then that's creative nonfiction. I mean, but some people push it. You know, Capote is considered like, the father, right, of creative nonfiction versus. So I feel like the rules are a bit freer, right, with creative nonfiction, or we're still, in a way, perhaps, figuring them out, whereas the rules of fiction are. Seem to be more well established.
- [20:45]
B
Katie gets on me because I tend to try to characterize somebody's writing to them, which is, as Katie says, highly presumptive. So let me be a little presumptive. In your nonfiction, there is both macro, in that you write about the black experience in America over 400 years, but there's also micro, which is your personal experience that you first realized was a fertile ground for illustrating that experience. When you. When you wrote your essay on a college application, do you feel one is more effective than the other? The macro or the micro?
- [21:23]
A
I am, I think, better at. How do I say this? I am better at sort of focusing. Focusing the story. Right? And writing about this person and that person and this person and that person in this moment and that moment. Right. Just like, very, like, narrowing it. The specific experience. Right. This specific lived moment. And so that's what I, you know, I guess, tried. I feel like that's one of my strengths as a. As a writer. I don't. I don't necessarily think I'm good at the sort of higher level, you know, overall picture stuff. I think that I am better at creating more sort of intimate, closer, immersive moments.
- [22:15]
C
What was it that or who was it that finally convinced you? These 13 articles, five book intros and three speeches should be a book. And how did you decide on putting them together into a cohesive whole?
- [22:30]
A
My. One of my best friends, also my editor, Kathy Belden, you know, she was the person who. Because I. It really. It hadn't occurred to me, even though I, you know, I had been. The first essay in the. Chronologically, the first essay in the book is the Katrina essay, We Don't Swim in Our Cemeteries. And I wrote a rough draft of that essay when I was, like, around 26 years old. You know, so I had been working on. You know, I'm almost 50 now, right? So I've been working on essays, you know, writing creative nonfiction for a very long time. But it just hadn't occurred to me that I would have a body of work, really, until. Until, you know, she brought it up in conversation and said, I think that you. You might have an essay collection. Right? And then we began to work together to sort of gather all of. All of my essays over the years. And so I really trusted her in large part, right, with, like. With going through the essays. I mean, we had discussions about it back and forth throughout the process, but I depended a lot, I think, on her direction and on her opinion with what should be included and also the order, because I didn't determine the order. You know, she really did much of the work of figuring out how the ideas from, you know, connect in the different essays sort of connected and how they would sort of, I don't know, evolve throughout the book.
- [24:03]
B
Some of these essays are extraordinarily personal, and there were times that you. You are very honest and say you. You contemplated giving up writing. Your brother is killed by a drunk driver who is never charged for killing him after Hurricane Katrina devastates your part of the world, when your partner dies of a respiratory illness at the age of 33. All three times you decided that you wouldn't give up writing, that you would hang in there, and that you found solace, I guess, in writing. Your successes didn't inspire you to keep. To keep hanging in there. It was the tragedies of your life that did. I find that curious outcomes.
- [24:57]
A
I have thoughts about that. I think in each of those moments, that there was a point where. Where the events that I lived through were so traumatic that I just sank, right, and felt complete despair and absence of hope. And so in those moments, I just. Part of me thought, what's the point? You know, that's what's the point? There's no what is the point in this? And. And I. So I guess in those moments, I was sort of just, you know, filled with pain and also, at the same time, blind to the. For me, one of the most fundamental aspects of literature is its ability to foster connection between people, right? And so I think in those moments, I was completely blind to that, right? That the. That. That continuing in the work is, you know, fostering connection. And in each of those moments, you know, the way that I found myself out, found my way out of that despair and back into, you know, the. The work and, like, committed again to the work. You know, there are multiple factors each time, but one, a consistent factor was always me being still enough and just quieting that horror and that despair for a moment to be able to listen for me, like I had to hear that little. That intuitive voice, which I call it my intuitive voice, but I don't even know if that. If that's what it is. I don't know if it's spirit. I don't know. I don't know what it is, but this voice would speak up and would say, would tell me exactly what I needed to hear in that moment. Right? So. So with my brother, it was no, this is your purpose. You know, you're. This is what you do. You're supposed to be a writer, Right? With Hurricane Katrina, it was don't give up, persist, try one more time. Right? When my partner passed, it was, you know, this voice saying, last thing that he would want would be for you to. To be silenced was. Would be for his death and his leaving to silence you. Right? And so, you know, I just had to reach a space where I could sort of listen to that voice and then. And that voice would spark just a little bit of hope. I don't know. Just a little bit of hope and a little bit of belief. I think.
- [28:00]
C
One of the things important to us with this podcast is the length of each program. We don't want to take up too much of your time when you guys could be reading. We think 30 to 35 minutes is probably about the ideal length.
- [28:10]
B
So we wanted to include parts of our conversation with Jesmyn Ward about why she's chosen Mississippi to live, about the best advice she's ever gotten about writing and how she processes going from being raised in extreme poverty to being one of America's most honored writers. So we're going to hold that till next week, and for now, we'll bring you up to date on the people who work on this podcast. And then a coda from Jesmyn Ward.
- [28:34]
C
And the coda is a reading, actually, one of her lines from one of her essays in On Witness and Risk
- [28:40]
B
bear the bookcase with Kate and Charlie is a joint production of Good Morning America and ABC Audio. It is edited by Tom Butler of TKO Productions, and our executive producer is Simone Swink. We want to make special mention of Amanda McMaster, Sabrina Kohlberg and Ariel Chester of ABC Good Morning America and Josh Cohan of ABC Audio. You can follow us and rate and review this podcast wherever you get your podcasts. And if you like to find any of the books mentioned on this podcast, you can find them listed in the episode description.
- [29:14]
A
For the many black people who have been killed for imagined insult, for perceived threat, who in the past died by the rope, who today die by the gun. You are why I do this.
- [29:33]
D
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